+J.M.J.+
The crunchy mom is often teased as if we’re all stuck up, holier-than-thou snobs who want to put others down for their Happy Meal habits. Sometimes it’s perceived as cruel to often deny kids junk food that’s so mainstream in our society. Furthering this attitude, there are multiple memes going around online right now that make fun of feeding kids a healthy diet because they all just end up eating Doritos and Skittles anyway.
These messages and attitudes bother me, not because I feel made fun of by them, but because they just continue normalizing the Standard American Diet and the resulting health problems that are rampant right now.
We are getting sicker, our kids included, and food is part of the mess.
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Sick: The New Normal
Infertility rates are sky high right now. Obesity, food allergies, and food sensitivities are as such as we’ve never known before. Hyperactivity in children is all too common, and autoimmune conditions flaring and running out of control plague countless people. Nutrition deficiency in a first world country sounds unbelievable… but it’s happening.
Worldwide, the proportion of years of healthy life people lost because of illness (rather than simply dying earlier) rose from 21 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2013, according to the Global Burden of Disease study.” – Robert Preidt for WebMD
Some of these issues are conditions that may be genetic – they might not have been caused by diet at all. They can be environmental – we live in a world full of toxic chemicals. But no matter what the root of the issue is, they can all usually be helped, sometimes healed, and often completely prevented in the first place by food.
We can joke and pretend that what our kids eat and drink doesn’t matter, but that is putting our head in the sand, ignoring the health crisis surrounding us that our kids will likely be a part of if we act like what they consume won’t impact their lives.
A massive study in France of over 400,000 people over 15 years lead to the following findings:
After analyzing the results, they found that 49,794 of the subjects had been diagnosed with cancer, with 12,063 having breast cancer, 6,745 having prostate cancer and 5,806 having colorectal cancer.
Upon further investigation, they discovered regular consumption of foods with low nutritional quality was associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer and cancer of the upper aerodigestive tract and stomach.
Women who ate foods with low nutritional value had a greater risk of being diagnosed with liver and postmenopausal breast cancer, and men who ate poorly had an increase risk of lung cancer. – Najja Parker for the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Artificial dyes have been linked to hyperactivity, aggression, and ADHD in children for years now. These nasty concoctions have required special labeling in Europe for almost a decade, yet they’re in almost any packaged food marketed for kids in the United States. (You know, the U.S., the same country with CDC statistics of 10% of childhood sickness being related to ADHD).
I know we can’t just overhaul our diets overnight, and if we’ve been relying on lots of packaged, processed, or fast foods, there is a huge culture shock (and price sticker shock sometimes) switching over to a different way of eating.
But this can be done.
Our kids can eat well, and with time their taste buds will change to crave and enjoy healthy foods.
The Alternative
It’s hard work cooking from scratch, and in order to make this doable and affordable, many families will have to cut out lots of fun and fancy treats and snacks in favor of very basic, simple, and affordable real food.
But you want to know what is time consuming and really expensive? Sick kids with conditions that are caused or aggravated by a diet that those who make fun of healthy eating are encouraging. Time and money spent in hospitals, on medication, and the lesser quality of life that comes with a health crisis will likely plague us in the future if we don’t clean up our kid’s diets and nourish them well while we can.
We can laugh and make fun of the mamas who make feeding their kids well a priority, but those attitudes don’t change what a steady diet of processed junk does to the body.
If you’re not feeding your family perfectly, breathe deeply and know all we can do is the best we can. But every healthy choice you make is setting your kids up to be better nourished, to having growing bodies with the nutrients they need to function well into adulthood, and to help our culture become a place where junk, food-like substances are seen as the waste.
Every time you say no to a junk food and make a homemade healthier version, you make a difference.
Every time you read a label and pick out the item without the rancid oils, or the cancer-causing sugar substitute, or the petroleum derived flavors and colors, or gut-disrupting additives, you make a difference.
Every time you choose the banana and nut butter over some chemically laden kid’s “fruit” snack, you make a difference.
Keep nourishing your family as best as you can. Even if people don’t understand why, even if your kids make poor food choices in the future, you are planting important seeds, helping prevent disease, and setting their bodies up as best as you can to thrive in a toxic world. Don’t worry about the haters.
Your work matters.
The Natural Catholic Mom 
This was well said! I find a lot of the snark comes from those who don’t want to change and resent being made to feel like they’re not doing enough.
Their attitude and their memes say more about them than those mothers who are simply doing what they can to navigate this crazy food system we’ve been given by generations before us.
It unfortunately does build walls and divides, we can’t change that aspect of human nature that bases a lot of social interaction and meaning around food.
All we can do is be gracious and willing to share what we’ve learned when asked and not take it personally when they’re upset by it.
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So true ❤
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This is so great and encouraging! Thank you for writing it!
I have a question: how do you know if you’re doing “enough”? We try to include fresh fruits and veggies in every meal (and snacks), avoid anything with artificial dyes or flavors, fake sugars, or hydrogenated oils… basically, we do all of our shopping g at Trader Joe’s! But, with two little ones and a third on the way, I just don’t have the energy to cook EVERYTHING from scratch without losing my mind and snapping at my kids. I know this is hard to ask without showing you a specific product, but do you have an opinion on things such as dye-free boxed mac’n’cheese, or grass-fed, nitrate-free hotdogs? I guess I’m curious about how “from scratch” things need to be in order to provide actual nourishment to our bodies. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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Such a good question! We can only do the best we can. Most health-conscious mamas I know shoot for the 80/20 or 90/10 rules, where 80/90 percent of the time things are the best you think they should be, and the other 20/10 percent of the time you’re just doing the best you can which falls short of your ideal.
I would say our famiiy is probably at like an 85/15 ratio right now. Like you say, when you’re pregnant and exhausted you can’t do everything you might do otherwise, so give yourself grace!
We probably have grass-fed hotdogs chopped into a box of dye-free box mac n cheese with a bunch of frozen veggies added in maybe once every 4-6 weeks as an easy meal during a hard week, but we’re also in a pretty easy settled point right now without any illnesses or new baby in the mix at the moment.
I would also suggest, if you can, to really embrace bulk cooking. When you make something healthy, try to triple or quadruple it and freeze the extras. When you can always pull a good meal from the freezer be it something for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, it really helps, too! I try to triple or quadruple one thing a week which builds up a great freezer rotation.
I hope this helps and please let me know if I can answer any other questions.
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I enjoyed reading this–thank you! I saw your Instagram post this morning and took note before I went for groceries and then was so glad for some of my choices now that I had a chance to read it all. I love the part about doing the best you can and also your comment about the 80/20 rule. Keep up the good writing! 🙂
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I’m so glad this was helpful. Thank you so much for reading!
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This was SUCH a good post!!! I am so grateful I grew up with a mom who researched and fed us very healthy diets and so much from scratch– yet bless her, she was made fun of just like you described here! Yet now I have a great knowledge base for feeding my own family (still learning too!) and I’m more confident against people making fun of me because I’ve been eating healthy a long time now and know how bad the average American diet is for our health. I would love to hear more of your thoughts on food allergies, though. Both of my babies were sensitive to dairy as infants and outgrew it around one year old (even raw milk/raw dairy…). I’ve often wondered if there was anything I could have done during pregnancy and what the right course of action would be. Also– do you give your kids probiotics?? Recently heard they can “cure” food allergies by helping us digest better.
Also appreciated your 80/20 comment above. My husband travels and works late nights often and sometimes I have to give myself grace when we eat easy or convenient meals, though I still try to avoid dyes, preservatives, etc in them.
God bless! Thanks for the encouragement!
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Oh thank you, I’m glad this could resonate with you!
Honestly, I don’t know if theres’ something you could have done for those allergies to be different. The microbiome of our guts are super complex and so many things affect them. I’ve wondered the same with my own daughter’s allergies, but there are some serious gut and autoimmune issues in our family history that I think caused them – it could very well be similar factors for you!
As for probiotics I haven’t been faithful with them with my girls because proper refrigerated probiotics you’re dealing with high high histamines which my daughter reacts to. However, since we’ve got her healing so well I should try some again. We also eat lots of yogurt, kombucha, and fermented sauerkraut which are great sources of probiotics that don’t make her itch.
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Loved this. It’s interesting how packaged and artificial has become “the norm” but it hasn’t been for all of history. Junk food is radical, not healthy food!
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I’m with you, Katie!
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Could not agree more! Though my teens are starting to feel like “mom’s natural ideas” are silly. But I keep trying. I have had horrible health problems as an adult and I’m just now starting to get better. I keep telling them that I just want them to have the best foundation healthwise I can possibly give them.
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Good for you doing the best you can, Virginia!
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